THERMAL CONTACT RESISITANCE BETWEEN SNOW/ICE LAYER AND PAVEMENT SURFACE

Abstract

The heat flux across the interface between a dry snow layer, a slush layer and an ice plate and pavement surface, i.e., pavement heat flux, may be formulized in terms of the thermal contact resistance, R_c. These three kinds of R_c were evaluated from the thermal energy equation using data obtained from heat transfer experiments.
It was found that (1) R_c of the dry snow-pavement exponentially decreases as the snow density increases, (2) R_c of the slush-pavement is constant for the mass ice content, Θ_i, less than 0.6, but exponentially increases with Θ_i for Θ_i≧0.6, (3) R_c exponentially increases with the volumetric air content, regardless of the snow/ice situation.